Death Had Two Sons Page 10

  Then there was silence, without drama or tension or fear of words. Dora looked through the window and Haim stared at the ceiling and the evening settled in like gray flakes of cotton wool, first at the corners, padding them out softly, then spreading along the walls and the washed tiles until it was necessary to switch on the light. Whenever this happened, although she did not have to, Dora stood up and straightened her wrinkled summer dress, picked up her handbag and said first to Haim ‘Well, I think I shall go now’, and he nodded and then she wished the other patients good night and walked out, always turning to look back at him when she reached the door, always smiling when she did. Her last smile crawled towards him and comforted him in a special way until the following day.

  When Dora left Haim read the newspaper with the interest and intensity of someone who is responsible for what is written in it. When he disagreed he was angry in the manner of someone who was in a position to correct the error and cause matters to be handled differently immediately. When he read of a political move which pleased him he nodded sagely in consent and pride. He was impatient and his disagreement was usually expressed in mumbling something like ‘well, what can you expect?’ and developing his own suggestions. He was sure he knew how to avoid the prospect of inflation, how to achieve peace with the Arabs, how to handle the refugee problem or cope with a drought. He was lying in bed on the second floor every evening being a general and a prime minister, a cabinet member and an economic adviser, the president of other countries – Russia and America alternately displeased him – and an expert in all fields. When dinner was served he was still involved with what he had read and it was then that he condescended to talk to the other patients while breaking the soft boiled egg and sipping the soup. In the middle of dinner and conversation today he felt a new pain. It was not any sharper than the usual dull pain but it was more definite and for a second he thought he could not breathe. Involuntarily he moaned and someone must have rung for the nurse because she was there with an injection ready. His tray was removed and a white partition was placed between his bed and the others. The drug relaxed him and he closed his eyes. ‘The doctor will be in later,’ the night nurse told him, and he was grateful for the isolating partition which enabled him to be alone with Daniel.

  Daniel never left his mind. Sometimes it was only his face and eyes, at other times he could hear his voice and physically sense his nearness. When he drifted away it was never to disappear entirely but rather to cringe on the periphery of his mind where logic slows down and fantasy takes over. Daniel was there in the heat of the day in the little shop, he was to be seen in his grandson Shmuel’s naughtiness and in jeeps and trucks loaded with soldiers or young men roaming the city. Never far, always ungraspable, Daniel was all the things Kalinsky wasn’t, and none of the things he wanted him to be, and even if at moments the parallels neared and warmed each other, they never really touched.

  To his left now, as he was lying on his back, was the white cloth stretched taut on white wooden frames and to his right the white curtain thin enough to let the moonlight through. Shrouded, he thought, as Daniel’s image approached from above. There were so many things to say to him. Some were simple, about Dora and Miriam – was he never going to see them afterwards, afterwards being now the word he used instead of death? Also a strange desire: he wanted to be buried in the cemetery at Gilad. It was foreign and far and the soil was not his but he knew Daniel could not refuse such a simple wish, he would tell him when he saw him. He had to tell him that he did not regret coming to Israel. He did not love it, or hate it, nor had he tried hard enough to fit in or break away. He never quite understood why he should have come, and once he had come he resented being reduced in size. But he did not resent the country, he wanted to tell his son. He had to warn his son too, he had to tell him about an old man he knew in Warsaw. The man was a just man, a saint. He was a sage and a fountain of wisdom and knowledge and he evoked the same in others. He, Kalinsky, did not visit him very often but whenever he did he left with renewed faith and a purer mind. Although the man knew the secrets of the Kabbala he was a simple man, a teacher. He had gone off to Israel some time after Haim, and Haim saw him again in Jerusalem a few years later. The man had dried up. He was still a teacher but something had been lost, the man had stopped dreaming. He was still doing and learning and teaching and was still admired and respected but something was fading away, the mystery was gone, the journey had ended, and Haim regretted having seen him in Jerusalem the way he did. He had to warn Daniel, to tell him.

  Would Daniel learn to say Kaddish, he wondered, a boy who had never prayed? He remembered him in synagogues on Yom Kippur as a child. He was going to fast, and did until noon, and then he asked for water and had his food. He remembered him asking the four questions on Passover with a thin monotonous voice concentrating on remembering the words and blushing whenever he had to be helped by Shmuel. Of course he would say Kaddish, he comforted himself, remembering again the shock he had when Daniel told him he was never Bar-Mitzvahed in Gilad. Yet, all this did not really matter, and the way to God, he knew, was not blocked by bearded men and the square letters in the prayer book. There were other things he had to tell him. Was he really unable to come? Perhaps they had lied to him, perhaps he was not south but north enjoying the coolness of the Jordan water and working in the cowshed? Perhaps he was in Tel-Aviv gay and busy or right here, around the corner, across the road?

  He felt no pain now, only sweet weakness. He would have liked to feel Daniel’s strong hand on his shoulder, on his brow, on his balding head. Daniel never touched him. He touched his own body, gently as if bidding it farewell. There were the hairy hands – the tattooed number, the scar on the right arm. His ribs were showing and his hands slid along them like a stick along a ladder to the groin. His testicles felt like useless empty organs and he did not touch them. He placed his hands on his chest, where the pain was and undisturbed by the snores of the other patients, the distant drone of an aeroplane and footsteps in the corridor he sank into drugged sleep.

  Was his father expecting him, Daniel wondered, and in what manner? Was he supposed to sit vigilant and quiet at his bedside and watch him give way? Were they expected to indulge in little stories and conversations in order not to think? There was nothing he could do to help and he was thinking of leaving town. He would visit his father and tell him he had to leave and go back. Anywhere. The room grew smaller with the hours and even the emptiness of the other room wasn’t soothing any more. It could happen any day, but suppose it did not. Perhaps he had the strength to fight it off, or the will, or the faith, and he could neither die nor recover. He could not stand there day after day watching the window across the road, lacking the will to cross it or the courage to leave. He could go south for a few days, join Rina in Shivta maybe and return for the week-end. He could talk to Miriam and the doctor and find out more, find out everything.

  Chapter Seven

  What did they do with Yoram’s legs? Did they burn them with the blood that stained the bandages? He gave Yoram blood and he woke up to find Rina there and they went for a wordless walk. When they returned Yoram’s parents were not to be seen in the waiting room and a solemn nurse said the doctor had asked to talk to them. Where did Rina’s tears come from? They just streamed down her cheeks but her face did not move and her eyes remained wide open. She wept silently, detached from her own tears, almost unaware of them. When Yoram’s parents returned to the room they took their seats on the bench again – old and proud. They did not look grave or dramatic, their faces held the childish innocence of incredibility. Daniel and Rina looked at them and did not dare ask and they looked back and there was no need to ask. Certainty hung between them and none dared grasp it and shake it.

  The doctor returned to them and said:

  ‘You may come in now. He is still unconscious but there is nothing we can do. Perhaps you would like to be alone with him.’

  Yoram’s bed was the only one in the little room – did they
give him a private room from the beginning or did they move him in as the privilege of the dying, Daniel wondered now. He remembered the sensation of entering the room. The four of them stopped on the narrow threshold and indulged in the ritual politeness of letting each other pass first. Each wanted to be alone with Yoram, but each needed the other’s presence, as Yoram was not really there. He was bandaged and two sheets hiding a blanket covered the emptiness of the lower part of his body. His face was unscratched though slightly swollen, and it was perhaps the first time that Daniel had seen him completely smileless, mature and serious, as if matching the finality of the occasion.

  There was only one chair in the room and Yoram’s mother sat on it, Rina behind her holding her shoulders gently. The two men stood near the window with their backs to the living winter street. How long they stood there, Daniel would never know. Perhaps all four seasons brushed against the white walls with winter’s greens and autumn’s pink flowers and spring’s golden wheat and summer’s mauve bare mountains. Maybe it was all the hours they had had with the young man lying there, or all the hours they would never have or just one long pause, breathless and choking. The doctor came in and went away and a nurse brought a chair for the older man and they never looked at each other but looked at their child, her man, his friend, as if intense vigil could restore life or quicken the weakening pulse or revive the movement of blood and juices and muscles.

  The sun sets early in Beer-Sheba in November and as Yoram’s face grew darker the nurse came in again to adjust the infusion bottle which looked like a useless toy, independent of the veins it fed. She put on the light which made them shiver and left again as if ashamed. Daniel felt Rina’s hand on his arm and jerked. She pulled him away to the corridor.

  ‘Let them be alone with him,’ she said, but he did not hear, or reply or really care.

  They sat on a bench in the corridor and suddenly they both knew it was all over. Rina grasped his hand in hers and the soft sound of crying reached them from the room.

  ‘I let him die,’ Daniel said.

  Suddenly Rina next to him was a woman, never to be a girl again.

  ‘Don’t ever say that again,’ she said, and he noticed her eyes were dry and her mouth hard.

  The doctor came dressed in uniform and opened the door. The two old people were embracing each other facing the dead Yoram and the old man’s tears were mercilessly illuminated by the light. Daniel stood up and looked at them and turned to go.

  ‘I will come to Gilad,’ he said to Rina, and he walked away along the corridor down the stairs, crossing the courtyard through the entrance gate into the street. It was raining lightly and he thanked each drop which joined his tears until he reached the centre of town and headquarters. A supply truck was being loaded and he found room on it and the roar of the engine drowned his sobs as he returned to the unit.

  The war was over, victory won and there was nothing for him to do. They would bury Yoram in Gilad, and he could feel the black mud heavy with rain water closing in on him. The rain made grave-digging difficult and when the area was cleared and the black toothless jaw opened it filled with water during the night.

  The cemetery at Gilad was on the slope of a hill overlooking the valley, so it could not be seen from below. The gravestones were flat and small and each name was charged with living images for those who visited the hill. There was no need to describe the dead or list their qualifications. A name, an age, the date of death. The war dead stayed together, in a straight military line as if still marching in formation somewhere. There were thirteen of them.

  Daniel arrived early and climbed the hill, bypassing the village. The clouds played a game with the sun, which kept finding loopholes through which to shine on raindrops gathered on the leaves of wild irises. His boots were heavy with mud and he spread his wind-cheater jacket on a tombstone. He was weary. He felt he had been walking for months. He remembered the excitement of war, the dreary disappointment of war, the price to pay, the sterile corridors, the prisoners’ sheds, Mount Sinai beautiful and meaningless to him, the traces of tears on Rina’s cheeks, the traces of jets in the sky and the bare feet of enemy deserters breaking the surface of the dunes. He held his head in his hands, covering his frozen ears, and shut his eyes. What was tiring was not the road already travelled but the absence of a road ahead. He made up his mind about the unit. He would quit as soon as he could. Coward, he thought, don’t you want to avenge Yoram, and opened his eyes to stare at the soft grass that grew gently embracing the yellow marble stones. He would leave the army, there was nothing he could do there, and wait for his father to come. He would help him settle down, teach him Hebrew, find him a job, give him a country. When he thought of this Yoram was suddenly there, smiling again for the first time since they covered his face with a white sheet.

  When Daniel woke up the sky was clogged with low hanging clouds. The valley lay dormant in dull bland colours and the asphalt roads looked like fresh whip scars across its back. The funeral procession was approaching the hill and Daniel continued to sit on the stone watching them. The people of Gilad did not have black mourning clothes, and only black scarves could be seen here and there. The few cars and tractors stopped at the narrow path and a few paratroopers lifted the coffin to carry it. No sobbing was heard, footsteps sank in the wet grass without an echo and there was no wind in the air. He got up and stretched his stiff limbs. Now he could see the bearded army rabbi and Rina’s face. He could see Yoram’s parents and feel the weight of the coffin. For a moment he wanted to run away, then to snatch the coffin single-handed and carry his friend, his brother, his beloved alone, somewhere else. Then he put his beret on and waited for them to approach, avoiding their eyes, avoiding his own heartbeats.

  The silent body of people moved among the graves. Occasionally someone would turn to look at a tombstone – a father, a son, a wife-and walk on to the new one. When they came to the waiting gap in the earth a woman started sobbing and tears that were held back were suddenly released. Rina came and stood near him and he could not bear her closeness. Yoram’s mother met his eyes and he felt she knew. The ceremony was short and simple. The shrouded body was lowered and a shiver went through Daniel’s spine as it touched the mud. Lumps of wet earth engulfed the body shamelessly and the coarse weeping of young soldiers broke the silence at last. ‘Dust unto dust, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken, blessed be the Lord …’ The empty words filled the valley with accusation and the first drops of rain blessed this new acquisition of the hungry earth. Yoram was covered with layers and layers, never to emerge smiling again, and the memory of his laughter sent more tears from the red eyes of the villagers to mix with rain-drops. Someone led Yoram’s mother away and the others followed, sending back looks of disbelief, walking faster as they descended as if there, down below in an open jeep, Yoram was waiting to prove them wrong.

  Daniel stayed with Rina, not looking at her until they could hear the sound of car-engines and see the cars and tractors entering Gilad.

  ‘You’re crying,’ she said. Her eyes were dry.

  ‘It’s the rain,’ he murmured.

  ‘I’m cold.’ She was shivering.

  He put his jacket round her thin shoulders sensing her tremble as he did so. She looked at the flowers on the fresh grave and shrugged.

  ‘We’d better go,’ he said.

  She nodded. She walked ahead of him and he noticed her dress which was gray flannel and her yellow patterned scarf which slipped to her shoulders and her thin black cardigan. He remembered their walks back from school reading Gorky and reciting Pushkin and he remembered her hard lips pleading for warmth and love which he could not give. He tried to reconstruct Yoram’s lips and was unable to. Yoram’s nose, Yoram’s hands, his shoulders, his voice. Could Rina remember him? All that was left was the smile in the eyes – he could not recall their colour or Yoram’s funny walk. He tried to remember things Yoram said to him and the horror of not remembering made him stop. Rina didn’t look back and when he ca
ught up with her she asked:

  ‘Why did you stop on the way?’

  ‘What was the colour of his eyes?’ he asked.

  She almost smiled.

  ‘You don’t remember, do you? It will all creep back. The eyes and the voice and the words and the expressions. Not when you expect or even want it, so leave him in peace now.’

  The rain stopped and the sky darkened. The wind grew stronger and the little jeep was a welcome shelter.

  They were driving slowly towards the main road.

  ‘And now?’ she asked.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ He wasn’t looking at her.

  ‘I think back to Jerusalem. You can leave me anywhere and I’ll get the bus.’

  ‘I’ll take you there. I want to go to Yoram’s parents first and then take a few things from my room.’

  There was commotion in front of the little room. People went in and out and the door was left open like on wedding-days. A few people shook Daniel’s hand in sympathy and he walked past them into the room. On the divan Yoram’s parents were sitting still and shy as if apologetic for finding themselves the centre of attention. A few relatives Daniel had never seen before were occupying the chairs and Yoram’s picture framed in black was on the small table. Daniel approached them holding his beret and wondering what to say or do. Yoram’s mother looked up at him and began to cry. He felt tears run down his cheeks and there was nothing more to say. Between them lay the amputated body and the bridge of tears was sufficient. He looked at Yoram’s father who stood up and embraced him gently and when leaving Daniel said: